Alien Anthropology – The Yeheri

In this latest installment of the Alien Anthropology series, we meet the yeheri. These beings appear in the opening chapters of The Fall of Valdek. As before, this post will be linked to the Alien Races page under History and Background.

Yeheri History

A cruiser from Enekosh made first contact with the yeheri. Enekosh is a prosperous sefkhit world, known at the time for its idealism. In large part due to this idealism, the cruiser’s captain was completely unprepared for what they encountered.

The Yaahaag system was split up between three major empires. All three had been intermittently at war for over a century in Yaahaag reckoning. (Yaahaag orbits its sun in roughly 7,400 hours.) They had also expanded throughout their system, colonizing outer worlds and asteroids. The wars between empires often flared up on and between those outer worlds and asteroids, even when uneasy peace reigned on the homeworld.

Without understanding the yeheri languages, or the dynamics of the three empires, the sefkhit made contact, seeking to make new friends and welcome a younger race into the loose galactic community.

Exactly what happened has never been adequately explained; the ship never returned to Enekosh, and the yeheri have never been forthcoming with the details. But certain details have been determined by context and study. The sefkhit cruiser made contact with the Kahapar Concordiat, the most militant and totalitarian of the three empires.

Historians believe that the Kahapars welcomed the sefkhit, then captured their ship. How long it took to reverse engineer the starship is unknown, but it must have taken only a few years. Within that time, and before they arrived on the larger galactic scene, it appears that the Kahapars used the tech they got from the sefkhit to crush their competitors. By the time the first yeheri ships were moving out into the galaxy at large, only one other empire still remained extant, and that only because of the liberal application of nuclear weapons.

Culture

The majority of the yeheri abroad in the galaxy appear to have come from the Kahapar Concordiat. Even those who don’t have developed a sort of affinity with their racial fellows, and that has had unfortunate implications.

The Yaahaag system lies in a fairly densely settled part of the Crux Arm. Wherever the yeheri ships went, it seemed that they found settlers there ahead of them, mostly with more advanced technology. The few inhabited planets that some yeheri flights of ships encountered that did not have technologically advanced populations did not fare well.

Students of alien anthropology agree that, in general, the yeheri seem to have developed a sort of racial inferiority complex. They found themselves emerging into a galaxy in which they were newcomers and second-class. That has led to justifying acts of piracy and atrocities even among those who are not die-hard Kahapars. “Yeheri” has become a by-word for “pirate,” which is unfortunate for those few of the remnant Yish Federation yeheri who have managed to make their way out of the Yaahaag system.

Biology and Physical Appearance

The yeheri have long, semi-prehensile tails, vaguely ornithoid bodies, and hammer-shaped heads with short crests of hair turning to tails at the back of their skulls. Their eyes are on short stalks to either side of their heads, and they can independently focus them. Despite their vaguely reptilian appearance, they give live birth, normally to three to four young.